Sue’s Reviews > Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives > Status Update

Industrial mining is…by design a blunt force, low-yield, high-volume business. … This is the primary reason that many industrial copper-cobalt mines in the DRC informally allow artisanal mining to take place on their concessions, and it is also why they tend to supplement industrial production by purchasing high grade artisanal ore from depots.

Why would children be handpicking stones outside a giant, Chinese-owned copper-cobalt concession? The best way to understand..is to examine the difference between industrial and artisanal mining.
Industrial mining is like doing surgery with a shovel artisanal mining is like doing it with a scalpel… Artisanal miners..can ..dig or tunnel for high grade deposits.. Or, like the children..handpick stones of value.

Villages along the road are coated in airborne debris. Children scamper between huts like balls of dust. There are no flowers to be found. No birds in the sky. No placid streams. No pleasant breezes. The ornaments of nature are gone. All color seems pale and unformed. Only the fragments of life remain.
This is Lualaba Province, where cobalt is king.

Philippe: If you really want to understand what is happening in the Congo’s mining sector, you must..understand our history. After independence, the mines were managed by the Belgians. They took all the money, and there was no benefit for the people. After the Belgians, we had “Africanization” with Mobutu. He nationalized the mines, but…only benefited the government, not the people. With…Kibala, (cont)

I’m already feeling angry and I’ve barely begun reading. So many millionaires, actually billionaires, have blood on their corporate hands.

The source of the Congo River was the final great mystery of African geography, and the drive by European explorers to solve this mystery tragically altered the fate of the Congo and made possible all the suffering taking place in the mining provinces today.